2020 Collection Competition

We are delighted that Susannah Hart, winner of our last collection competition, has gone on to win the National Poetry Competition. You can read her winning entry here and order her debut collection, Out of True, here.

This year as well as holding a competition for first collections, we are accepting second (and subsequent) collections (we had a lot of feedback that actually these can be harder to place than first collections...)

Guest Judge for Collections: Glyn Maxwell

Glyn Maxwell is a poet, playwright and librettist. He was born and brought up in Welwyn Garden City. Glyn read English at Oxford and studied poetry and theatre at Boston College with Derek Walcott, with whom he’s had a long association and whose Selected Poemshe edited in 2014. His volumes of poetry include The Breakage,Hide Now, andPluto, all of which were shortlisted for either the Forward or T. S. Eliot Prizes, and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His selected poems, One Thousand Nights and Counting, was published in 2011 in the UK and the US. Glyn’s theatre work includes Libertyfor Shakespeare’s Globe, Babette’s Feastfor The Print Room and several shows for Storyhouse Chester including Cyrano de Bergerac, The Beggar’s Opera, Wind in the Willows and TheSecret Seven. His opera libretti include The Firework Maker’s Daughterwhich was shortlisted for Best New Opera at the Oliviers in 2014, Seven Angelsand The Lion’s Face, all at the Royal Opera House, and Nothingfor Glyndebourne.

Glyn has taught at Amherst College, Columbia, Princeton, NYU and the University of Essex. He’s a fellow of the Welsh Academy and the Royal Society of Literature and teaches regularly for Live Canon. As well as verse Glyn has written two novels and a pair of guidebooks for poetry:On Poetry was described by The Spectator as ‘a modern classic’ and it led to Drinks with Dead Poets, both a critical guide to poets in their own words and a fictional journey into the pubs, lanes and village halls of a dreamlike autumnal village.